I've covered Utah's Olympic dreams for more than three decades. Here's what I've seen

PARIS — You’ll always remember where you were for the big events, right?

After traveling more than 5,000 miles to be in Le Palais des Congres de Paris for the International Olympic Committee’s decision on whether to give Utah the 2034 Winter Games, I was sitting on the floor of a crowded makeshift holding area outside the meeting when the announcement came.

I glimpsed some of the excitement expressed by members of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games being livestreamed on a colleague’s laptop between texting editors and checking the Deseret.com website to see if the story I’d pre-written in the event of a win had posted.

The rest of the day was a blur of interviews, news conferences and an Uber ride with Deseret News Editor Sarah Jane Weaver to USA House, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s gathering place for Team USA supporters, where a private party celebrating the award was underway.

By the time I’d finished updating my stories late that night — alas, without any color from the party since news media couldn’t get in — the time difference and lack of sleep had caught up with me. It would be another day before I’d see the photos capturing the moment more than a decade of bidding paid off for the Utahns determined to bring the Olympics back.

I’ve seen that joy before. And the tense smiles when bidders see a Games go somewhere else.

I’ve been covering Utah’s Olympic dreams long enough that when our public relations team asked me for the date when I first got the assignment, I paused. I know I was there in Birmingham, England, in June 1991, when Salt Lake City saw the 1998 Winter Games go to Nagano, Japan.

And I know my first story when I took over the beat was about how the proposed budget for a 1998 Olympics had doubled. Was it 1991 when the leader of that bid, Tom Welch, tried to talk me out of writing about the escalating budget? Or was it even earlier? “Maybe we should say the early 1990s,” I ended up telling the PR team.

I wish I’d had time to dig out the copies of those stories clipped from the Deseret News that I’m sure are somewhere in my basement. Mostly what I remember from Birmingham all these years later is thinking then that I’d enjoyed covering the bid while it lasted and expected to move on to another assignment since clearly this one was finished.

Instead, I’ve ended up writing about Utah and the Olympics for more than three decades. It’s taken me around the world, to every continent but Antartica. In 1995, I had a better view in Budapest, Hungary, of the bid team leaping out of their seats when then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch announced the 2002 Winter Games were going to “the city of Salt Lake City.”

There are plenty of other stories I could tell, too, like watching the world’s press descend on the IOC’s Lausanne, Switzerland, headquarters amid the escalating bribery scandal involving Salt Lake City’s 2002 bid. Or about talking with Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, then the leader of the 2002 Winter Games, as he drove past a smoldering Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

But what’s really stuck with me over the years is something I first wrote about 22 years ago, how much the Olympics can mean to those welcoming the world to their hometowns. That was most evident to me the morning after a bomb tore through a downtown park filled with thousands of people during the 1996 Atlanta Games, killing one and injuring more than 100.

As I recall, I was wandering around the mostly deserted streets nearby when I ran into a young family who wanted to see for themselves what someone — it turned out to be a domestic terrorist who wouldn’t be caught until 2003 — had done to their city before heading to see an Olympic event.

Here’s how I described our conversation in that March 2002 news story:

I asked them if they were afraid to be downtown. Although Olympic officials had said hours earlier that the Games would go on, no one could guarantee that the bomber wouldn’t strike again.

The night before, the streets had been filled with civilian and military authorities while helicopters buzzed overhead. I later described it as being as close to a war zone as I’d ever expected to see in the United States. Even in the daylight, the scene was eerie. Downtown was deserted as investigators descended on the now-closed park.

But the family said it was important for them to be there. Not just to attend the event they’d purchased tickets for but also to show their support for the Olympics, which had brought the world to their home.

They started asking me questions about what I thought of the Games, which had already been criticized for transportation and technology troubles, as well as for the tacky street vendors throughout downtown.

They also wanted to know what competitions I’d seen. None, I told them. My assignment was to cover organizational issues of the Games. I recall that we talked for a few more minutes, and then the family headed off to their event. Then one of them — I believe it was the mother — returned.

She asked me to take one of their tickets and go to the event with them. She told me I needed to see what the Olympics were really about and, well, have some fun.

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I didn’t accept her offer, but I’ll never forget it.

It showed me how much it means to residents of an Olympic city that visitors enjoy themselves and leave having some sense of what makes that city a special place to those who call it home.

What also stuck with me was the family’s determination to leave the safety of the suburbs that day. They didn’t want their empty seats to suggest that the bomber had succeeded in destroying the spirit of the Games.

And for the record, I still remember where I was when the bombing occurred around 1:20 a.m., sound asleep in my hotel room miles outside of Atlanta. I ended up catching a ride downtown with a member of a foreign TV crew that spoke no English and waited hours on the street for any news. Then we heard the media center was reopening for a news conference.

I was stuck in the middle of a huge mob of media from around the world waiting to get through a security checkpoint when the news conference was about to start. Somehow, I was spotted by a contact from the Atlanta organizing committee who whisked me into the media center.

So I was able to be there when Olympic officials announced the Games would continue, able to experience — and, hopefully, convey — the resilience it takes for a Games host to have invited the world to see not just sports competitions, but also a community and its values.

The Utahns who have worked so hard over the years to bring the Games to the state not just once, but now twice, have always believed this is the place that offers something special to the rest of the world. Their determination to showcase what they want others to love as much as they do about Utah is really what I’ve been covering all these years.

That’s also what I’ll be writing about as Utah gets ready for the 2034 Winter Games, collecting another decade of Olympic memories.